What they Don't Tell You About Starting a Business
A business is one of the best vehicles for personal change and transformation that I know of.
Starting a company is hard. Really hard. Usually it’s precipitated by years of failing again and again as you try and figure it out.
But you already knew that.
Then one day, it all starts to work. You create something successful, it takes off, and everything is a thrill. You feel on fire. You brim with enthusiasm and the momentum you feel in this expansion feels incredible. This is the “thrilling” phase of business. When everything is taking off and you’re energized and motivated and feeling the momentum.
Over time, sometimes something begins to shift inside. The business is the same, or better, yet something inside of you is not. The thrill starts to dim as you suddenly realize the immense pressure to continue to make payroll. You start feeling like the business demands more and more of your time, or your life.
You start doubting your ability, and who you are inside becomes less connected to who you are outside.
Something is off between the alignment, between the businesses demands and your dreams.
How do you navigate the demands of your business when they are different than your personal dreams? How you see yourself? What happens when what thrilled you in your business starts to create fear, doubt, and anxiety?
What happens when you start to feel emerge a secret dream, a small seed of something different. A new role, pathway, career, way of working. Do you listen to that? OR keep it quiet? Do you exit, shut down, quit, hire, seek support, push it all down?
Do you recognize those symptoms of stress that wear at you, or do you soldier on?
Who are you becoming?
What they don’t tell you about starting a business is how much you change.
How much your business changes you.
You’re changed in the process, or changed by the process, and change is normal. It’s an inevitability of life.
In fact, a business is one of the best vehicles for personal change and transformation that I know of.
You will feel differently about your work, and about your business. You will change, and become someone new. There can’t be any other way.
And what if I told you that the way back to growth, motivation, energy, and enthusiasm was to lean in and discover who you are becoming? Rather than trying to control, let go. Rather than trying to be consistent, be persistent, finding new ways to align with your work that also come from your deeper dreams and desires.
Starting a business will grow you, if you let it. If you don’t, you’ll stay trapped in a past version of who you are, lacking motivation and energy, and unable to expand.
The trick is to let go and become someone new. No matter how scary that is, this is the path that will lead to growth. So make a leap, take a step, and move forward from who you’re becoming, following where your energy leads you, and no longer holding back that who that is true to you.
xx David